Coffee and cabbage

Two of J.S. Bach’s loved secular cantatas – essentially small-scale operas for soprano and bass voices – are given in the context of his fifth Brandenburg Concerto and canons from the Goldberg Variations

Bach arranging and arranged

What happens when great composers arrange each other’s works? J. S. Bach gave Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater a new text and a new viola part, making a fresh piece that speaks both of Germany and Italy. Mozart gave string players the pleasure of playing fugues from the Well-tempered Clavier II – we complete the set of all the four-part fugues from this work

Bach in context

Bach and his rivals (2)

Cantatas composed for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, 30 January 1724, by Telemann, Graupner, and J.S. Bach, a year after they had composed their cantatas for the audition of the Kantor’s job at St Thomas’s Leipzig.

Bach and before

Music by three predecessors of J.S. Bach as Kantor at the Thomasschule in Leipzig – Schein, Schelle, Kuhnau – and the first cantata that Bach composed for his new job there: the magnificent ‘Die Elenden sollen essen’ (BWV 75)

Every one a chaconne

This programme is centred on the chaconne: we hear how Henry Purcell and J. S. Bach join hands in this much-loved dance form of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of the few works of Philipp Heinrich Erlebach that survive, we perform a suite that concludes with a stirring chaconne. The two Bach cantatas are contrasting: BWV 150 is said to be Bach’s earliest surviving cantata, BWV 78 was composed in Leipzig at the height of his career. Both of them feature impressive chaconnes: to open BWV 78, and to conclude BWV 150.

Nun komm! Music for Advent and beyond

We explore the form of the French overture in two cantatas by J. S. Bach: the thrilling Advent cantata ‘Nun komm der Heiden Heiland’ (BWV 61), from his Weimar years, and ‘In allen meinen Taten’ (BWV 97) from his later years in Leipzig. We play a dance suite by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, opening with another French overture. To complete the concert, Heinrich Isaac’s beautiful ‘Innsbruck ich muß dich lassen’, which provides the choral melody for cantata 97, is sung a capella, and is played in two instrumental settings.

Laments for Passiontide

The lament became an established musical genre and in this concert we present examples of this expressive form over two centuries, from Italy and Austria. Perhaps the first example of the musical lament was Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento d’Arianna’: a five-part madrigal, performed here with soprano and strings and continuo. Monteverdi later adapted the piece for a sacred text: his ‘Pianto della Madonna’. Haydn reworked his ‘Arianna a Naxos’ aria as a Marian lament, ‘Maria quaerit Christum filium’, for soprano and string quartet. In addition we perform passionate works by Monteverdi’s near-contemporary Merula, by Schmelzer (who worked in Vienna) and by Vivaldi (who spent the last years of his life in Vienna)

other composers (secular)

The Food of Love

Shakespeare’s plays were at the heart of the Restoration theatrical repertory. Freely adapted, with lavish music and spectacular staging, a number of them remained popular even after a new Restoration repertory had developed. In this programme, music by Henry Purcell is placed alongside that of his predecessors, Matthew Locke and Robert Smith, and of his pupil John Weldon, painting a picture of changing musical approaches to the words of the bard. The programme also includes the earliest surviving setting of a sonnet by Shakespeare, an adaptation of Sonnet no. 116 by Henry Lawes.

Robert Smith (c. 1648–1675): Chacone in B flat
Henry Purcell (1659–95): ‘If music be the food of Love’ (Twelfth Night), 1st version
Matthew Locke (1621–77): Alman from The Rare Theatrical
John Weldon (1676–1736): ‘Take, O take those lips away’ (Measure for Measure)

Songs in The Tempest
Pelham Humfrey (1647–74): ‘Where the bee sucks’
John Weldon: ‘Dry those eyes’
Henry Purcell: ‘Dear pretty youth’
with instrumental music by Locke and Smith